Optical fiber connectors are used in a variety of applications where one or more optical fibers of a set of optical fibers are connected to another set of one or more optical fibers, a circuit board, or other devices. For example, optical fiber cables require connectors adapted to connect to and link discrete segments of optical fibers.
Certain optical and electrical-optical devices have circuit boards that need to be interfaced with one or more optical fibers so that optical signals can be received and processed by the device, and also transmitted from the device to another device or to a back plane. This often requires plug-in or receptacle optical connectors. Alternatively, such an interface may be accomplished with a connector end adapted to be permanently (or semi-permanently) fixed to the circuit board to establish and maintain optical communication with corresponding devices (e.g., photodetector or phototransmitters) on the circuit board. Because interior space is typically at a premium for most optical and electrical-optical devices, the optical connectors are often compact so that they can fit into tight spaces when connecting to a circuit board housed within the device. The fact that space is also at a premium on the circuit board makes establishing the circuit-board optical interconnection even more challenging.
Most optical fiber connectors and the optical fibers connected thereto do not allow for readily accessing and connecting to a circuit board housed in the tight confines of most optical and opto-electronic devices because connection requires introducing significant bending loss in the optical fibers. This is particularly true where the connection needs to be formed at a right angle with a sufficiently tight radius, either in plane or out of plane, while maintaining both low loss and high reliability.